once during a tandem i had a female with one long pony tail get her hair stuck in the three ring on the left side after opening the canopy...her head was pinned to the riser....used my hook knife to cut her hair. Good thing i didn't have to chop the main before i freed her from the riser!!!

once during a tandem i had a female with one long pony tail get her hair stuck in the three ring on the left side after opening the canopy...her head was pinned to the riser....used my hook knife to cut her hair. Good thing i didn't have to chop the main before i freed her from the riser!!!

So? Is that a good reason why sudents should have somthing on their head? A helmet or Fraphat?

Not quite on topic but, As DZSO many years ago I watched a dude on an AFF Rating course with a line over cut two lines then land his main, was thinking WTF then rememered he'd been trying to sell a Hobbit main for a while and now had a 2nd rig. When he got back to the shed I dumped his reserve much to his displeasure and sure enough there was a "reserve"that had 300+ jumps as a main. He passed the next course a year later.

Title says it all. Id like to hear some story's of when you have used your hook knife. hopefully i learn something from one of your storys.

1987 Nats in Muskogee. I was using an old "wings wars" style RW suit to video 4-way team L.O.S.T. (Lack of Support Team) from Ft. Hood. I had rigged up some swoop cords using Dacron 550 line. After opening, I stripped the swoop cords and reached up for my toggles. Oops - the left and right swoop cords tied themselves together from the wind. It was like wearing handcuffs under canopy.

I probably would have figured out a way to steer back to the DZ, but hacking it with my hook knife was easier and may have saved me from an embarrassing landing.

If you don't carry a hook knife while skydiving, start today. After all, if you don't have a hook knife when you need one, you may never need one again.

Title says it all. Id like to hear some story's of when you have used your hook knife. hopefully i learn something from one of your storys.

1987 Nats in Muskogee. I was using an old "wings wars" style RW suit to video 4-way team L.O.S.T. (Lack of Support Team) from Ft. Hood. I had rigged up some swoop cords using Dacron 550 line. After opening, I stripped the swoop cords and reached up for my toggles. Oops - the left and right swoop cords tied themselves together from the wind. It was like wearing handcuffs under canopy.

I probably would have figured out a way to steer back to the DZ, but hacking it with my hook knife was easier and may have saved me from an embarrassing landing.

If you don't carry a hook knife while skydiving, start today. After all, if you don't have a hook knife when you need one, you may never need one again.

Can you elaborate on what swooping cord are? are they still used today?

I had a brake line hitch around a rear riser block on a CRW jump (a combination of bad block design and sloppy excess brake line stowage). After 10,000 feet of messing around I cut the line and landed on rear risers. That same day I pulled my knife after a riser became caught on my helmet as a result of my lines going slack during a wrap. I was being choked by my own helmet and couldn't locate the buckle, so I decided to cut the chin strap. Fortunately it cleared as I pulled the knife out of the pouch. Then on the last jump the day, I got another jumpers bridle hung up on the handle of my chest-strap mounted hook knife. I managed to clear that one without doing any cutting. Good times.

In 2002 I was first on the scene of an accident. The woman was unconscious and being choked by the strings on her hat (no helmet....). I used HER hook knife to cut the hat and goggles off her head, which allowed her to breathe easier without causing perhaps further unknown injury.

Not my use, but used in front of me-- in the middle of a CRW 16-way..... actually, maybe a 25-way, one jumper in the formation to my left got the top skin of another jumper's canopy wrapped around his foot, and the tension was too great to allow his foot to release. He used his hook knife to cut a small slit in the top skin of the lower jumper's main. The cut released the foot, and the lower jumper flew to a safe distance then cut away.

Those instances were enough to keep me jumping with at least one knife at all times. Later in the same year, I helped evaluate the video from a CRW wrap that resulted in a fatality. I cannot say for certain, but given the dynamics of the wrap, the 2 places I keep hook knives during CRW would have been completely inaccessible. I decided i needed at least one more knife located on a different quadrant of my body, especially while doing CRW.

I've used mine for an in-air situation 1 time in 15 years. It was an AFF Instructional jump, where as one of the instructors where this particular jump took place - we carry (FRS) student radios with us, in our jumpsuits during the jump. I had chosen to have mine hang around my neck (again tucked-in under my jumpsuit), attached via a shoestring lanyard.

Well, apparently, sometime during the course of this jump (that got just a little "wild" ) the lanyard found a way to work its way out a bit from under my collar, and was "catching" in the relative wind. Upon deployment - the lanyard actually got snagged in one of my 3-rings, and was cutting across my neck! At 1st, I thought I had a line across my neck, or a riser somehow or some sort of other "normal" malfunction. Try as I might, with all the tension on it, (and it slowly choking me out) - I could not manually get it free / clear, so I cut it free with my hook knife.

My Lesson learned? Now, rather than carrying my radio via a lanyard around my neck to have it with me - instead, I simply zip it inside my inside jumpsuit pocket where it can do no (similar) harm.

Title says it all. Id like to hear some story's of when you have used your hook knife. hopefully i learn something from one of your storys.

A few years ago I used mine to slice up the topskin of my brand new parachute (5 jumps). OK, I didn't do it, it did it all by itself when it unsnapped from my harness and went into the nose of the canopy during deployment

On a 4 way CRW jump I ended up passing though the front center lines and exited out through the side of my teammate's canopy. He chopped and his canopy way trailing behind me with one line around my chest. The trailing canopy kept spinning up getting tighter and tighter as well as "licking" the tail of my main.

I thought "what if I need to chop, can I?" and realized that my reserve was being held tightly closed by the line around my chest. Thinking back to my early CRW training, I remembered Kevin Vetter and Paul Joseph saying that a hook knife was recommended but that you will probably never have to use it (other than for uses posted above).

As I pulled out my hook knife and prepared to cut the line around my chest, I shouted out "Sorry Kevin!". One quick slice and his main was no longer an issue.